Fan-cuts of Famous Films

What to do when a film doesn't quite meet expectations? Sure, you can write a bad review up on the Quickflix site, or even go so far as to rewrite a new sequel film script. But some gifted fans out there have gone one step better, and released customised versions of their favourite films.

It all started with Star Wars I: The Phantom Menace. After a lengthy wait to venture back into the Star Wars universe, many excited fans left theatres a little disappointed, complaining about story elements ranging from the blatant marketing tool character known as Jar-Jar Binks, through to the questionable racial stereotypes of major Star Wars races.

Naturally many science-fiction fans were outraged. Every major movie has its fans, but in particular Star Wars fans take things to a different level. Until an alternative movie was released. Titled "The Phantom Edit", it is a fan-edited version of The Phantom Menace which cuts away scenes and elements of the film (such as Jar Jar Binks), rearranging shots and removing unnecessary character dialogue.

Meesa Gone!

Kevin Smith, of Clerks and Mallrats fame is quoted as saying that it was "Smart editing to say the least."

All up, The Phantom Edit cut out 20 minutes of total footage, and was championed by fans and critics alike as being better paced and more focused than the original. Even George Lucas was said to have been interested in viewing a copy.

This caused a bit of a trend.

Now fans are recutting and changing all kinds of different films. For entry level stuff, it's trailers. We have featured a number of them on the site before just like the one below. The trailer here shows The Shining cut to look like a romantic comedy:



Medium-range editing involves crafting short-films. The classic YouTube clip Robocop VS Terminator is over 6 minutes long and splices in footage from a range of films to make it appear as if action-icons Robocop and Terminator are in a vicious deathmatch with each other. See it below:



Endgame stuff though is the feature-length film edit. Thought Pearl Harbor focused a little too much on a love-story? Pearl Harbor: Strength and Honor Edition solves the problem, as someone has edited out the entire love-triangle out of the film, turning it into an action-packed war epic that they claim "pays genuine tribute to the men and women who fought and died at Pearl Harbor."

If you were a little disappointed by the Wachowski Brothers follow ups to their 1999 smash-hit The Matrix, then you might be interested in one of the most celebrated recuts around. DeZionized edits Matrix Reloaded and Matrix Revolutions into a single movie. All of the human city of Zion is removed as part of 129minutes unnecessary footage trimmed from the films.

Not Shown In DeZionized: Zion.

The end result? A movie that many claim as a worthy sequel to the original.

Other Matrix sequel edits go even further, one, known as The Matrix Hacked changes the entire story of the the trilogy, rearranging and adding deleted scenes to craft a completely different plot from the Matrix trilogy.

There are many other examples listed on the web. Whether it is a hardening-up of Michael Bay's Transformers to remove the one-liners and wackiness, or a rearrangement of Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, so the film now plays in sequential order.

Shown: Transformers (Not Shown: Wackiness)

Now, studios understandably don't particularly love these recuts, but then they don't particularly dislike them either. They are - after all - films that are never sold retail, many are terrible, none will ever be screened in theatres and all are somewhat hard to come by. Add to that there would be considerable backlash felt from anyone targeting its most loyal of fans (much like when Metallica took on Napster).

In the end, a fan-edit is difficult to make, and it's impact is extremely small. But in a web 2.0 world, customised films may one day prove to be the most creative way to build the ultimate personal DVD collection.